


Deception

by notenoughcoffee



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 10:52:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19316707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notenoughcoffee/pseuds/notenoughcoffee
Summary: Anne and Katherine are up to no good...again.





	1. Chapter 1

Katherine was crouched low to the floor on the top two steps of the staircase. She peered around the corner, looking down the hallway toward the bedroom of her intended target. Anne, stood behind her on the stairs, prodded at her shoulder, nearly upsetting her balance. 

“Would you stop that? I can’t be discreet if I’m falling down twelve stairs, can I?” She snapped, hoping that her voice would not carry the short distance down the hall. She clutched at the handrail with one hand and tried to steady herself with her other hand on the top stair, not quite certain how she had once again found herself involved in another one of Anne’s schemes, but regretting it all the same.

“Just go already! We’re done for if she comes out and sees us creeping around up here!” Anne prodded her shoulder again and gave her a nudge with the toe of her boot. The heavy sole of her shoe clomped noisily against the hardwood as she set it back down. 

Katherine gave her a dismissive wave of her arm before turning and gesturing for Anne to give her some space.“Let me go in first,” she whispered. “She’s not going to trust you right away.”

“Why do you think that?” Anne’s face, the picture of innocence, gave every indication that she had been offended. Katherine’s eyes rolled involuntarily. 

“You have a deceptive face, like you’re always thinking of the best way to steal everything in the room.” Katherine turned back toward the hallway again, readying herself for her task.

“Excuse me? A deceptive face? What does that even mean? And I’ve never stolen a thing in my entire life! Either one of them!” Anne, affronted at the audacity of Katherine to imply she did not appear to be a trustworthy person, seemed to forget the purpose behind their supposed subtlety and demanded an explanation. 

Katherine shushed her, waving her hand again and hissed, “Shut up, will you! She’s going to hear us!” At Anne’s scoff, she continued, “And you definitely stole her husband.”

Outraged, Anne grabbed Katherine’s shoulder and tried to spin her around once more. At the unexpected movement, Katherine’s legs slid out from underneath her. She tumbled, arms flailing for purchase and found nothing but Anne. In a tangled mess of limbs and curses, the two girls hit each and every step as they crashed to the landing below.

“What are you two halfwits up to now? It sounds like you’re bringing the whole house down!” Catherine shouted from the girls’ previous location, staring down at the jumbled pile at the base of the stairs.

Clutching her hip and thigh, which took the brunt of the impact of each stair on her way down, Katherine hid her tears in Anne’s side, concealing both her pain and embarrassment as best she could. Pain radiated up her spine to the base of her neck and down her leg all the way to her toes. Though she didn’t think the damage was too serious, she knew walking would be difficult for a few days and she was certain she was going to have a galaxy of a bruise for weeks. 

Anne, having had the benefit of Katherine’s body between herself and the hardwood, was a little less worse for wear, though entirely disheveled. She rolled a little to remove most of her weight from the cushion of Katherine’s body and stared at the infuriated face up above.

“Fell’s all. We’re good. Right, Kat?”

Katherine gave a weak nod, her face still pressed into Anne’s ribs. 

Catherine eyes them suspiciously, not trusting a single word. “Whatever you two were up to, at least the Lord has seen fit to deal out his retribution before I was made to.” Without another word, Catherine spun on her heel and left Anne and Katherine in a heap.

***

Catherine slipped to her room, noiseless on her bare feet, closing the door behind her with more force than she had anticipated. She took a deep breath, leaning her back against the closed door. Her head thunked against it and she stood with her eyes closed for a moment, listening for movement on the other side. 

Pained groans and muffled complaints traveled up the stairs, but heavy boots and shushes did not follow. 

Catherine smiled to herself. She had been blessed with luck. Though Anne and Katherine were habitually obtrusive, they had somehow snuck up on her as she was returning the delicate golden chain that held a small letter B to Anne’s disaster of a jewelry box. The previously broken clasp now repaired without the knowledge of it ever having been damaged. 

  
  



	2. Deceiver's Remorse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two days later...

Catherine could still feel dread, cold and consistent, in the pit of her stomach. Tense and apprehensive, she kept waiting to hear Anne screeching each and every time she walked into the room. The necklace she had broken had taken three days to repair, and she had felt every passing second tightening a noose around her neck until all she was able to feel was constant pressure on her windpipe. The sound of the clasp breaking in two still rang in her ears. An almost inaudible snap and Catherine had felt the ire in her blood replaced with alarm and terror. Panic set in every time she thought about it, even after returning the repaired piece of jewelry to its home. 

She had only wanted her jumper back. She hadn’t signed on for distressing days wrought with anxiety which had yet to end when she had walked into Anne’s bedroom. Her intent upon entering had been innocuous past the retrieval of the item of clothing Anne had “borrowed” without permission and with little promise of returning. It had been in plain sight on the dresser top. She’d snatched it without a second thought until that tiny, metallic pop. 

The intricate golden B had caught in the yarn of a knitted cable, the chain wrapped around the lid of the jewelry box, and the clasp had not stood a chance.

Anne, in the subsequent days, had been eyeing her questionably, as though she could sense the deed had been committed without knowing the specifics of it. Catherine assumed that the girl had not noticed the missing necklace while it was out. She knew Anne would have leveled the house to the ground had she seen it gone. Her screams would have been heard for miles. 

With the chain back where it belonged for two days, the noose removed from her neck, and Anne none the wiser, Catherine presumed her conscious would feel clearer, lighter. It did not. 

She expected the suspicious glares from Anne to suddenly find a new target. They did not.

And so, she waited to confess her sin to someone other than God, knowing that though he may forgive her for the act, she needed to come clean and seek forgiveness from the one she had wronged. She simply did not know how to go about doing it without making the situation worse.

She needed advice, and she knew exactly who to go to first.

She watched Jane ordering Katherine to lay on the couch so she could apply another dosage of arnica ointment across her bruising and waited for her turn for the woman’s attention. The patchwork of blues, purples, and greens of her horrific bruise stretching from her ribs to her knee after her swift descent down the stairs with Anne on top of her, made Catherine wince in sympathy. The poor girl had been moving at a glacial speed and with an awkward gait since her tumble, but the sight of the damage left Catherine baffled as to how she was moving at all. 

“Honestly, Kat, I wish you would tell me what you were doing when this happened. I don’t for a minute believe it was just an unfortunate accident. Not with Anne involved,” Jane muttered, part of a constant stream of words used to distract Katherine or to berate her into snitching. Catherine had yet to decide.

As Jane was finishing up and tugging clothing back to their appropriate places, Catherine fetched a bag of frozen broccoli to use as an ice pack. She placed it against Katherine’s hip. The contact made the girl gasp and Catherine did her best to not cringe with pity before patting her hand and leaving her to rest where she was.

She pulled Jane to the kitchen where their conversation was less likely to be overheard. 

“Jane, I’ve… I… That is to say… I, erm, well-”

“Oh Christ, am I going to be here all day? I just need to know now how long this is going to take so I can get dinner sorted. Part of which is now thawing on Anne’s latest casualty. I don’t want to listen to anyone complain about not having food in the house when the cupboards are full and they can’t be bothered to put anything together,” Jane continued to babble, occasionally sending a worried look toward the door that would lead her back to Katherine. 

Catherine tried not to take offense. Wringing her hands, she swallowed her pride and whispered, “I broke it.”

“You broke what?” Jane rubbed at her eyes, exasperated, and clearly not wanting to know the answer. 

“Her necklace.”

“Catherine, seriously, I don’t have time for this. Explain whatever it is you want to say or come back later when you’re ready. Whose necklace did you break?” She demanded, knowing full well that any answer she received was going to make her life more difficult.

“Anne’s necklace. You know the one she wears on special occasions,” Catherine watched as Jane’s eyes went wide in shock. Color began to rise in her cheeks and Catherine rushed to finish, “I got it fixed. I don’t even think she realized that it was gone.”

Jane’s breathing slowed to its normal pace again and the red in her neck and face started to disappear as quickly as it had come. “Right then. What’s the problem?”

“I need to apologize, but I don’t know how.”

“You need to keep your trap shut and pretend that everything is as it is,” Jane insisted. An easy solution to a potentially earth shaking problem. “No good will come of telling her something like that. The problem is fixed. Get on with it,” she said while turning to pull items from the refrigerator.

“I can’t, Jane. I have to tell her. I need to ask her for forgiveness,” her voice cracked. Tears she hadn’t known were gathering broke free and trailed down her cheeks.

“No. You can get forgiveness from your God. All you will get from her is an execution order,” she snapped brandishing a carrot in Catherine’s face.

“Who are we executing? I’m in!” At the sound of the voice, both Jane and Catherine jumped. Catherine nearly did not land back in her chair. 

Anne waltzed into the room, nabbed the carrot from Jane’s hand and left again, leaving both women frozen in fear.

“You say nothing. Do you hear me?”

Catherine could only nod in agreement. Maybe if God forgave her, it didn’t really matter who else did.

***

Anne crunched noisily on her carrot as she slumped down on the couch next to Katherine. She gave the bag of broccoli a pat and chuckled a bit at the whimper her action produced. 

“You’re alright, Kitty,” she laughed, taking another obnoxious bite before leaning close to Katherine’s ear. “Once you’re all healed up and able to walk without looking like a useless, dumb, convalescent again, Catherine has a dress that ought to cover any leftover bruising.” She flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Besides, that will give us an excuse to get back in her room and find out what she’s been hiding.”

Katherine groaned.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Let me go first. They're not going to trust you right away." "Why do you think that?" "You have a deceptive face, like you're always thinking of the best way to steal everything in the room."


End file.
